Male violence against women is areal problem in our culture, one the churchmust address. Our responsibility here isnot simply at the level of social justice butat the level of ecclesical justice as well.We must teach from our pulpits, ourSunday school classes, and our VacationBible Schools that women are to becherished, honored, and protected by men.This means we teach men to rejectAmerican playboy consumerism in light ofa Judgment Seat at which they will giveaccount for their care for their families. Itmeans we explicitly tell the women in ourcongregations, “A man who hits you hassurrendered his headship, and that is thebusiness both of the civil state in enactingpublic justice and of this church in enactingchurch discipline.”Church discipline against wife-beaters must be clear and consistent. We must stand with womenagainst predatory men in all areas of abandonment, divorce, andneglect. We must train up men, through godly mentoring as well asthrough biblical instruction, who will know that the model of a husbandis a man who crucifies his selfish materialism, his libidinal fantasies, andhis wrathful temper tantrums in order to care lovingly for a wife. Wemust also remind these young men that every idle word, and everyhateful act, will be laid out in judgment before the eyes of the One towhom we must give an answer.In the public arena, Christians as citizens should be the mostinsistent on legal protections for women. We should oppose atherapeutic redefinition of wife abuse as merely a psychologicalcondition. And we should call on the powers-that-be to prosecuteabusers of women and children in ways that will deter others and makeclear society’s repugnance at such abuse.Whatever our views on specific economic policies, we mustrecognize that much economic hardship of women in our age is theresult of men who abandon their commitments. We should eschewobnoxious “welfare queen” rhetoric and work with others of goodwill toseek economic and social measures to provide a safety net for singlemothers and abused women in jeopardy. We should join with others,including secular feminists, in seeking legal protections against suchmanifestations of a rape culture as sexual harassment, prostitution, andsex slavery.An abusive man is not an over-enthusiastic complementarian. Heis not a complementarian at all. He is rejecting male headship becausehe is rejecting his role as provider and protector. As the culture growsmore violent, more consumerist, more sexualized and moremisogynistic, the answer is not a church more attenuated to the ambientculture, whether through a hyper-masculine paganism or through agender-neutral feminism.Instead, the answer is a truly counter-cultural church, a churchthat calls men to account for leadership, a leadership that cherishes andprotects women and girls.